I have just finished 10 days of operating as KH6/WA5ZNU in Kahana on Maui, Hawaii, grid BL10. Contrary to reports I had read I found QRP HF operation in Hawaii to be easy and fun.

I brought my Yaesu FT-817+Z11 tuner, a PSKMeter, and two laptops: a 73 Mhz Sony Vaio running Linux and a 233Mhz Toshiba Libretto running Win98, a balun, coax, and 166 feet of wire.

The condo was an end uint second and third floor over a sloping hillside 150' from the ocean with two lanai displaced horizontally on both floors oceanside.

I tried two different antennas in three different configurations.

1. A 100' loop around both 3rd and 2nd floor lanai with a 45 degree angle between the upper and lower suares at 3rd and 2dn floor level, fed directly with coax (no 4:1 balun as I don't have one). This antenna worked but did not pick up as much as #2 and there wasn't enough room to do the 136' necessary to be 2 wavelengths on 20m so I abandoned it.
2. An 34' inverted L with one leg dangling down the side of the building to about 6' off the ground and the other across the 3rd-floor wooden semi-awning over the lanai, with 3' of it angled 90 degrees horizontally. I was able to work 3D2AA (first ham from Rotuma, operating from Lautoka, Fiji) and JH1BZJ with this antenna.
3. When I figured out that the condo next door was under construction, I turned the antenna into a 20m dipole but moving the balun to the post between the rooms and extending the legs across the tops of both lanais, and suspending the wires with nylon rope. The balun was shielded from view by the u-shaped column, and was mostly invisible. A little black tape would have taken care of the slight glint you could see from the parking lot, but since it was invisible from the pool and beach anyway I didn't bother. I was able to work FK8GX in New Caledonia, JM7OLW in Japan, WA6OVP in Nevada, ZL2AUJ in New Zealand, and a variety of other US West Coast and midwest stations. I *heard* plenty of Russia, Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Australia, and one early evening even got a QRZ out of a ham in Spain! As for local HF, I heard some folks on Kauai on the KH6/KL7 HF SSB spectrum around 7.090 but didn't break in as they were coordinating maintenance of their inter-island linked 2M/70cm repeater system.
4. The last day the condo maintenance finished and I dropped the other leg od the antenna down at a 45 degree angle to make a inverted-L-V, which didn't work as well but I did hear 3D2AA again and worked JA4BPI and got 579.

I am looking forward to trying my salt-weathered dipole again.

- posted by Leigh @ 20:13 z